Thursday, May 3, 2012

Building Our Energy Future:

How to Plan in an Inconstant World

I
was struck the other day by the report of another bankruptcy of a solar
venture. I was not struck by the event itself so much as by the fact
that it signals to me that one fundamental difficulty we face in
building our energy future is that the landscape keeps changing around
us.

This
is not an isolated event. All current nuclear projects are being
questioned because of the low cost of natural gas. Everyone recognizes
that the price of gas is unlikely to stay so low in the long term, but
it is difficult to make a decision to invest billions of dollars in
nuclear power plants that may not be economical for many years.
Likewise, just as solar power projects seemed to be reaching a stage
where the costs were starting to come down, China entered the market
selling the same products at lower prices.

It's no
surprise that energy is affected by a lot of outside forces. Many other
commodities are as well. Food, clothing, gasoline, cars,
appliances...you name it. In our global economy, we can be affected by
events on the other side of the world--wars, droughts, floods,
repressive dictators, terrorists, and foreign governments manipulating
the prices or availability of exports.

What is at least
somewhat different about electricity we are crucially dependent on an
adequate, reliable supply of electricity. What is also somewhat
different is that very large projects are involved in developing our
electricity supply infrastructure, and they require substantial
investments and long-term commitments.

I must confess
that, until Solyndra went into bankruptcy a few months ago, I wasn't
really aware that solar manufacturing facilities were receiving the same
kinds of loan guarantees as nuclear power plants. I might have heard
about it, but I probably thought they were for small sums of money.
The mantra about solar power has been that it is small and distributed,
and doesn't require the large investments that a nuclear power plant
requires. The complaint about nuclear power had been that it was so
costly that it couldn't stand on its own two feet--it needed government
support.

But the truth is that both
solar power and nuclear power are big businesses. Starting a new solar
manufacturing facility, or starting a new nuclear power plant both
require large investments over a period of time. And both can be
derailed by unexpected changes in the marketplace.

Jim
Rogers, the CEO of Duke Power, captured the concern when he noted that
natural gas is cheap now, so everyone builds natural gas, yet it would be a mistake to have "all gas all the time."
He argues for a balanced portfolio of energy sources that includes
natural gas, coal, nuclear power, renewables and energy efficiency.

But
the question is always how to get to that state when one
source--natural gas--is cheaper today. Likewise, the question is how to
build a domestic solar industry for the future when it isn't the most
economical source of power today.

Different
countries have approached this problem in different ways. Some have
5-year or 10-year plans. Some have nationalized power generation and
distribution systems.

In the US, we want the
marketplace to work, but we are willing to use certain kinds of
government intervention--support of research, loan guarantees, power
purchasing agreements, etc.

So far, I think that we
have used these measures in a short-term fashion, but have not fully
faced the problem of how we will assure that we have in place a diverse,
ample electricity generating capacity to be available when the price of
natural gas inevitably goes up, when China raises the prices for its
solar panels, or when any of a host of other unanticipated events around
the globe suddenly increase the cost of a "cheap" energy source, or
decrease the availability of an "abundant" energy source.

We
need to get past our normal short-term thinking and consider how we can
achieve an energy supply portfolio that will work in the longer term. I
know that is easy to say, but much, much harder to accomplish.
However, it is vitally important to assuring a future with adequate
supplies of clean, reliable and affordable power.***

2 comments:

setting off all the Nuclear power plants would not solve the problem ,but instead it might create a big problem for the government to meet with the growing demand of electric power in the country .According to me all the nuclear plants much be checked out and all necessary safety measures must be implanted . Government should also see the safety its people as nuclear radiation is very harmful and must employ people or establish a department to prepare for such happenngs

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About Me

Dr. Gail H. Marcus is an independent consultant on nuclear power technology and policy. She previously worked as Deputy Director-General of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) in Paris; Principal Deputy Director of the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology; in various positions at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC); and as Assistant Chief of the Science Policy Research Division at the Congressional Research Service (1980-1985). Dr. Marcus spent a year in Japan as Visiting Professor in the Research Laboratory for Nuclear Reactors, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and five months at Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry. Dr. Marcus has served as President of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) and as Chair of the Engineering Section of AAAS. She also served on the National Research Council Committee on the Future Needs of Nuclear Engineering Education. She is a Fellow of the ANS and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Dr. Marcus has an S.B. and S.M. in Physics, and an Sc.D. in Nuclear Engineering from MIT. She is the first woman to earn a doctorate in nuclear engineering in the United States.